Our Disney vacation planning is in full swing! We’re headed to the most magical place on earth in just over a month and to say we’re excited would be an understatement! With all the excitement though has come A LOT of planning for this mom! Traveling with three kiddos ages 7, 4, and 1 means being prepared for anything and EVERYTHING. A few weeks ago, we had some friends over to celebrate our vacation planning for a Disney Kids Preschool Playdate with games, treats, & goodies for the kids while us moms took to Pinterest to plan away! Here, are some fun ideas to get your preschool aged kiddos excited for their Disney trip and some tips for us moms to help aide in the planning process too!

First, go simple. The kids don’t care about all the extra bells & whistles, they’re just excited for their favorite characters. I hung a banner using these fun character cards Disney provided us with, but you could print pictures of your favorite characters off the computer to make your own!

Get them involved in the action. Our kids loved getting to decorate their own Mickey pancakes! If your littles are like mine, they LOVE to help in the kitchen, so once I was done chopping, I let them get to the decorating!

Plan a hands on activity for the kids to give the moms a chance to do some planning too! We had some games out the kids could play on their own while we took the Pinterest for some vacation ideas.

Since our playdate happened before Easter, we did a Kilimanjaro Safari Animal Hunt hiding little animals in eggs along with some candy & coins for the kids to find. This could make a fun “get excited for your vacation” hunt too hiding pictures or rides and things they can do once they arrive! I think we may incorporate something like that into our countdown we’ll be starting in a few weeks.

Now, for us moms.. while the kiddos played with their animals they found in their eggs, we started going through our Disney Vacation Board pins! Some of us moms had been before while others (like me,) are first timers with our families. There is SO MUCH that goes into the planning process, it was nice to pick each other’s brains! I learned a few key things to help get my planning started.

Write everything down – old school style! Grab a pen and paper. I was typing everything in notes on my computer, but I found writing it all down helped SO MUCH. I even found some fun printable itinerary’s I printed for us all to write everything out and laminate to take with us. Head to my Disney Vacation Planning Board to find some of the ones I found useful!

Call Disney to get all of your dates! Have them tell you your date to book dining, book your fast passes, when you can check in – EVERYTHING. That’s what they’re there for and it was so helpful to me to be able to hear all that info for myself! Even if you have a travel agent book for you, I still liked calling and getting and hearing all the info for myself.

Make a list.. check it twice. Make a list, by day of everything you’ll need. Write down what you are each wearing, what you’ll need for the parks that day – EVERYTHING. I found once I did this, I was WAY less overwhelmed by everything I needed to buy ahead of time!

Have an envelope for each day with cash for mousekeeping and tips. Putting your cash in labeled envelopes ahead of time will make things go so much smoother.. and besides, I like knowing I have everything paid for in advance and this way I can budget and plan better too!

Those are my top tips for now, but I’ll be sharing more of our planning journey and our trip as we get closer to our travel date! Have you been to Disney with young kids?? Leave your tips in the comments, I would love to hear what worked for you and what didn’t! I’d also love to hear what your kids favorite rides are! Lavery is most excited for the Ariel ride and Landyn can’t wait for Tower of Terror!!!

A huge, huge thank you to Disney Parks & MomSelect for sending us a box of goodies to spread the pixie dust to our friends! WE had so much fun hosting this playdate and planning for our trip.. we can’t wait to share even more of our magical vacation with you as we get closer!!!

Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, & Facebook to follow along on our trip next month and leading up to for more tips and ideas too!